Autumn
by Raven Blanchard
Summary: A promise to make Leaves fall. A vow to kill those who had wronged her. A girl who remembers the future, and a boy who refuses to forget the past. Things are set into motion the moment she first draws breath, only moments after him, and she can't help but think that she might have just doomed the world. (OC/SI) (M for rape and taboo.)
1. Fixing Broken Things

_WARNING: Contains **rape**. Mostly allusions to it than actual graphic scenes depicting nonconsensual sex, but there you go. Also, this will be a **twincest** kind of thing, so if you don't dig that, maybe you should take your shovel somewhere else. Just saying. This fic will be **DARK** and will contain a DARK Naruto._

 ** _YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED._**

* * *

 **ONE**

 **Fixing Broken Things**

* * *

Everything between them is natural.

They have known only each other their whole lives. They have been together for so long, stuck in their own cruel predicaments. Him and his sadness, her and the hopelessness she keeps hidden from everyone else, or tries to. To both of them, words aren't entirely necessary, and silence is comfortable. He would braid her beautiful red hair if she frowns, and she would kiss his whiskered cheek if his eyes are too sad. They would hold hands when they feel like the rest of the world is against them, which is all the time.

Bound together by unfortunate circumstances, they lean on each other, each finding solace in the other's presence. It has always been the way things were between them. Nothing is forced. Everything is natural. They flow and gravitate to each other like magnets, and they never question the connection they have. Sometimes it bothers her though, how easy it is to be with him, how snugly he just... _clicks_ , with her. Because it is as unnatural as it is natural, as abnormal as it is normal. After all, she knows that the connection should never even exist in the first place.

Not that she'd ever tell anyone that.

Everyone is entitled to their secrets, after all.

She enters their room and sees him staring off into space, his eyes narrow and furious, and she knows instantly that he's remembering _it_ again. It's the thirtieth time in as many days. It's so easy for her to glean his thoughts, his emotions, as hints of them flitted across his face like flies on food. A twitch of his eyebrows, a weight pulling down the corners of his lips, a line in the middle of his forehead as he no doubt went back to...

... to _that night_.

"Stop thinking about it," she says, masking her worry, because she knows how much he hates it when she goes parental on him. Especially since he is older than her.

Technically.

 _Supposedly_.

He's always been rather mother hen-ish since before they could even talk, and it has only gotten worse after _it_ happened. _Especially_ after it happened.

His clouded irises clear up and return to their usual bright blue, and he gives her a wide smile. "Stop thinking about what?" he asks with a look of confusion so genuine-looking that she would have believed it if she hadn't seen the tumultuous look on his face just seconds before.

They've never really talked about _it_ before, and whenever she tried to broach the subject he just looked away and glared at his feet like they had mortally offended him. Whenever she asked him about how the whole ordeal made him feel he just stared at her with such wide eyes she would have thought he was looking at the bogeyman — not that he would know what a bogeyman is — and then looked away and proceeded to studiously ignore her.

He's talking to her now, at least, so at least there's progress on that. But he's still acting like a wounded kitten about it, hackles raised while he hisses and glares at everything, and it's just _so unfair_ , she thinks, that he's being all traumatized and shit when all he did was watch as it happened. To _her_ , not to him. Some part of her thinks that he has no right to feel the way he does, no right to act like he has seen too much of the world, because _she's_ the one who has seen too much, been through too much, felt too much.

Although she supposes she's probably expecting too much emotional maturity from him. For all that he's much sharper and smarter than... well, than he _should have been_ , Uzumaki Naruto is still just an eight-year-old kid. Not that it makes her feel any less bitter of the fact that she's the one who has to be stronger. That she's the one who has to move on past the shadow of the past and drag him with her to the light of the present when she's not even ready to step out from the shadows herself, when the darkness clings to her still.

She meets his gaze. " _That night_ ," she replies flatly. "You're remembering _that night_ again."

 _You shouldn't,_ goes unsaid. _You should just forget about it like I'm trying to. I shouldn't be the one doing this comforting shit._

"Don't you think," he says, quickly dismissing her annoyed tone, "Don't you think that maybe I shouldn't forget? That maybe I should always remember?"

Ah. There's that word. _Should_.

But what should and shouldn't people remember anyway? There is a point in remembering pain because you learn from it, but then it's stupid to never forget pain because that shit haunts you. So should you or should you not remember it? Is it better to forget something and never learn your lesson, or to remember it and forever fear its hold on your life — on your past, present and future?

The human brain is a strange thing, she thinks. It's funny what it can remember and what it can't and what it should and what it shouldn't. It's weird that it sometimes doesn't remember the things it should, and that it remembers a lot of things it shouldn't. It's also funny what she remembers and what she knows, because she isn't sure if she should remember or know the crap that she does. Hell, she's not even sure if she's supposed to _be_ in the first place.

But then that line of thought strays too close to what she wants to never _ever_ remember, so she—

 _"Demon whore!"_

 _Trousers slipping off hips and thighs. A kunai pressed against her throat._

 _"You're an abomination! You should have never existed!"_

 _"Take this! Take it like the dem—"_

— Oops. Too late. She remembers it now. Damn it all to hell and back, everything gave her flashbacks nowadays. Damn Naruto and his retarded questions.

 _"Don't you think that maybe I_ shouldn't _forget?"_

She wonders if the kid has brain damage. Maybe he's a masochist? Because who'd want to _remember_ that shit?

She just wants him to forget it, really. To super forget the fuck out of it until he goes back to being the ball of sunshine he's supposed to be. The cheerful kid he _should_ be.

Huh. There's that word again. _Should_. Funny how it keeps bouncing around in her brain and reminding her of how badly she's mucked everything up.

"I wanted to forget at first," Naruto admits in a soft voice. "But I can't." The laugh that suddenly comes out of his mouth sounds bitter and angry and at the same time resigned. "It's my punishment for not protecting you, I think. For not being strong enough."

She winces at that. "Naruto, we're only eight—"

He throws a glare that seemed a touch feral. "And they cared about that, did they?" the question all but oozed with sarcasm.

"Naru—"

"It didn't matter to them, so it shouldn't matter to me," he continues. "I mean, damn, I was so stupid, thinking that ninjas were... damn it... I should have known better that there was no decent human being in this place."

"That's not true, Naruto. Jiji has always been kind to us. And Teuchi-san and Ayame-nee."

"And that's it, isn't it? Three people. In all of Konoha, only three people ever showed us any kindness. The rest hate us. What did we even do to them? Why are they calling us fox demons? Is it the whiskers? If we hide them, would the villagers treat us as normal people?"

She debates whether or not she should tell him the truth that she knows but by all means shouldn't — it's a secret, sure, but in her opinion it's the worst-kept secret in the whole Fire Country — however, before she opens her mouth to speak, he goes on again.

"I'm sick and tired of these people! We tried doing good deeds and helping old ladies carry their groceries and sweeping the leaves from streets, but they still hate us! They sell us rotten fruit, half-rotten meat and torn clothes, and they keep hurting us on our birthday! And... and what those ninjas did to you... it proves that there is no good in this place. We have three people, and I'm glad they're nice to us, but in the end three isn't enough, Aki-chan. Not in a place with _thousands_ that would want nothing more than skin us alive!"

He shouldn't be this way, she thinks. He shouldn't be filled with such... anger and loathing. He shouldn't be so bitter. He's supposed to be all smiles and positivity. He's supposed to be _Naruto_.

And he is. But he also _isn't_ , somehow, and she doesn't know how to fix that. She doesn't even know what went wrong, what had _changed_ , for him to deviate so far from his... character.

(Deep in her mind she knows that of course _she_ is what went wrong. _She_ is the only new element in this fixed system, the only anomaly in this world that already has a predetermined fate.)

She thinks that maybe she should have sliced her own neck when she found that stray kunai in the playground two years ago. Would have saved her a lot of grief. It might've released the Kyuubi from its seal (or maybe just half of it? She doesn't know jack about fuuinjutsu), but under the weight of what-should-have-been-but-never-will-be, she finds it difficult to care. She loves Naruto, of course, and it makes her feel like a right bitch that she wants to all but unleash a bijuu on an unsuspecting village and murder a few thousand people just because the kid's putting too much pressure on her, but she realizes that it is slowly driving her insane knowing that with every breath she takes, with every word that comes out of her mouth, that guaranteed "happy ending" she remembers and knows should come to pass might not be quite so "happy" of an ending. It might just be an "ending."

And seriously, who can live with knowing — or remembering, whatever — something like that? Who do the gods of delusions think she is? Moses? _Jesus_?

She hates this responsibility, this self-appointed task of keeping this world's destiny on-track. She feels the weight of it on her now tiny little shoulders, feels it bog her down like nobody's business and she just wants to _shrug_ like crazy and let it all fall to pieces because fuck destiny, she isn't made for this.

She hates knowing that everything that goes wrong is — either directly or indirectly — her damn fault. And it's not even a cognitive error like assuming personal causality or anything like that, because it's the truth. A _fact,_ even, though she isn't quite so keen on proving it.

His eyes meet hers again, and he frowns at her, as if knowing how she feels. Naruto's creepy like that, in the way that he just _gets_ her. Like a kid reading a word and knowing that a bunch of squiggles on paper really mean "Ramen" or "Dog" or "Tree."

He crosses the room in a few strides and wraps his arms around her shoulders, as if to make sure she still exists. It makes her happy and sad and pissed at the same time, the way he clings to her as if she's the only person that's real to him. She can't help but think that he's not supposed to be this attached to her, or attached to her at all. That special place in his heart should have Konohagakure no Sato in it, not Uzumaki Akiko.

They stay that way for a while, until she pulls away and looks him in the eye.

"You don't have to keep doing it, Naruto." she eventually says. _You don't have to care._

"But I do," he replies. Serenely, as if he is just talking about the simplest of things. In some way she supposes he is. Naruto, for all his subtle complexities, is a simple creature by design. She could even understand the thoughts running a mile an hour behind the blue depths of his eyes: _They hurt Akiko, and they should pay_. She knows that he wouldn't be nearly as furious had he been the one wronged.

Not that he _hadn't_ been wronged at all, of course, but that's just Naruto in his full selfless glory. His own hurts don't matter to him as much as hers. So really, it's all _simple_.

And that simplicity makes her wonder how it was possible for her to so monumentally fuck everything up.

When she doesn't reply, he continues, "I _have_ to remember, Aki-chan. I have to care." _Because no one else would_ , goes unsaid. "I have to remind myself every second of every minute of every hour of every day, because..." He trails off, his eyes glistening with with unshed tears. Akiko waits for those tears to roll down his cheeks, but they don't. She knows what keeps them from falling.

Fury. Violent, righteous, vengeful fury. And how she wishes that he'd just _stop_ feeling that way because she's _fine_ , damn it all.

Naruto sees the mildly annoyed and guilty expression — _why does she even feel_ _guilty_? he wonders — on her face and it only steels his resolve to become stronger. For her. To avenge her. He hopes that one day, when he gets strong enough — and he _will_ , he swears to himself— he would hunt down those seven men and kill them as slowly and as painfully as possible. He remembers their names and ranks. How could he forget? They'd all but handed him their identities on a silver platter as they defiled his sister in front of him — as they violated her and said, with each thrust of their disgusting... _things_ , into her small body: "... _These are our names. Remember us. Remember that you are worthless to us. To Konoha. Don't you ever forget, you demon scum._ "

He returns to the present with a sharp jolt, and finds his sister studying him the same way she studies Jiji. With fondness and exasperation. Naruto steadies his gaze and hardens his voice. "Because I can't allow myself to forget what they did to you. Not now, not ever. They _hurt_ you, imouto."

"Naru," she murmurs, her shoulders sagging with resignation. "It's been a month. I've healed already. You know I always heal, just like you do. I'm not hurt anymore. I'm _fine_."

"No," he snarls vehemently, because she _isn't_ fine. She would never be fine again after that night, no matter how well she heals, no matter how unscarred her skin is now. Naruto knows better than anyone that not all wounds bleed and leave scars.

Not all broken things have cracks.

Sometimes a thing would just... break, and people don't understand how or why because it's broken _inside_ and there are no cracks to see. It just stops working and nobody can explain why it doesn't work because it _looks_ fine, and it _looks_ whole, and it _should_ work.

"I won't let it go," Naruto says, eyes ablaze.

Akiko frowns, a million thoughts racing through her mind and waiting to spill forth from her lips: _Don't break your heart over this. Please smile, I haven't seen you smile since that night. Please forget what happened to me. Pleasepleaseplease._

After a long stretch of silence, Akiko whispers the one thought that truly matters. "It won't be easy."

He stares at her for a moment. "...I know."

"You'll lose so many nights of sleep working for it, and even then you might not achieve it. People _hate_ us, Naruto. And you'll get hurt a lot. You might even _die_. Ninjas aren't as glamorous as Jiji makes you think they are."

He bristles at that. "You think I don't know that? Ninjas hurt you, imouto. Ninjas _violated_ you. Trust me when I say that I know _exactly_ what ninjas are."

"But ninjas aren't all evil, either," Akiko says, feeling the inexplicable urge to defend the rest of Konoha's shinobi. Strange, that. She doesn't even like them. "They're not all heroes, yes, but they're not all villains. You can't..." She sighs. "I understand your need for vengeance. I do. But those... those men... they don't represent all Konoha-nin. You can't judge everyone else for things they haven't done."

He stares at her like he thinks she just said something monumentally stupid, and she doesn't get it, because weren't her words simple enough?

But then he asks, "You mean I shouldn't judge them the way they've always been judging us for things we never did?" He sits on the edge of their bed, fists balled tight. "It doesn't matter what I think anyway. I'll be a ninja. I'll be strong — the strongest one in this village. I'll be Hokage if I have to, and I'll make them fear us."

Fear, she thinks. Not respect. Would one changed word in Naruto's goal make a big difference?

She hopes not.

She also hopes she never finds out.

Her face remains carefully blank. "Fine," she eventually spits out, trying and failing to keep the acid from her voice. " _Fine_. But you have to be careful. You should forg-" she flinches at his thunderous glare and corrects herself, "You should _pretend_ to forget what happened to me. Because you... _we_ can't even so much as _look_ at them wrong, Naruto. We can't. You know what they'd do."

Naruto looks away. There really isn't anything he can say to that.

"What happened..." she grimaces, and she hates that she has to explain this shit to him because doesn't he _get_ that people don't just _hate_ them? Naruto and Akiko are so passionately _loathed_ that it's a miracle they haven't been murdered yet. Though maybe that's because of their permanent ANBU guard. Not that the stupid animal-masked nins were of any help during _that night_ , but that could have been due to the fact that Naruto and Akiko had been avoiding them that time. It was their birthday, and both of them were sick of celebrating it with just the two of them while masked strangers watched. So they snuck out. It was so funny that they were driving their guards nuts.

Not so funny when seven drunk chuunin found them in that abandoned alley.

 _"Well well well," a drawling voice, scratchy and hoarse. "What have we here, my friends?"_

Akiko shakes her head and meets Naruto's gaze. "What happened to me was bad, but it could be worse. It could," she insists when he begins to protest. "Naruto, if we give them any more cause, they'd lynch us."

"I know that," he growls in annoyance. "But I can't just sit here and smile like an idiot after what they did to you! This stupid, _depraved_ village that you always loved..." _That_ I _always loved,_ she can almost hear him correct in his mind, "It violated you, and I can't just roll over and accept that!"

"... Do you really hate Konoha that much?"

He instantly gives her a flat stare, as if he has expected her to ask. Perhaps he has. She wouldn't be surprised if he's been asking himself the same thing for a long time.

But his answer is simple. "No. I don't hate Konoha at all."

She sighs in relief.

But Naruto's not done yet. "I have other things to worry about than _hate_ ," he adds. "I don't hate the village, imouto. When I think of Konoha, I only feel motivated."

"Motivated?"

He beams at her then, the way he always did before, the way he _should_ , and Akiko can't help but grin back.

She ignores the nagging sense of foreboding she feels, and chooses to simply bask in his smile.

* * *

 **A/N: To those who can't tell, this is an OC-insert/SI fic. You probably noticed that in my other fic, NARPG, I stressed my belief that the how of things (like, how did the real-world-based OC enter the world of Naruto) is important. This still holds true in this story, though I'll be bottlenecking this fic to focus more on thought processes and interpersonal relationships and drama, so there won't be much extrapolation on existentialism and the like. However, that's not to say that there isn't some explanation on how Akiko came to be. It just won't be explicitly stated.**

 **Q: Why hasn't Sarutobi executed the seven chuunin? How can the Hokage allow such depraved monsters live?**

 **A: Can't say much about this, because the answer will be in future chaters, but what I can say is that the Hokage doesn't know about "that night." There you go.**


	2. Fixing Halves

**.**

 **TWO**

 **Fixing Halves**

* * *

She dubs it an "innocence game."

Naruto doesn't get it at first, says that she's being stupid because 'innocence isn't a game dattebayo, and if it is it sounds really boring,' and when she explains it to him he stares at her as if she's grown a third nostril or something, but eventually he agrees to play the "game" with her, if only to keep her from having that frazzled look on her face that makes her seem so old and tired.

The moment he says yes, she beams at him, and though her smile isn't quite as bright as he wants it to be he accepts it, because it's probably the best she can offer, and frankly, it's much better than the scowl she wears as her default expression.

So they "play" it together, and it amazes Naruto, somewhat, that his sister can smile at these people still, after years of them treating her like crap. Naruto blames himself. He's had that same stupid optimism back then, the same cheerful (stupid) outlook in life, and he must have affected — no, _infected_ — Akiko somehow, because he remembers that she was quite the pessimist before. _Realist_ , she once told him with a roll of her purple eyes, and he laughed at her then, called her a dried up old prune because she was always so negative and so... _adult_ , with things. That was a year ago. So much has changed since then.

As he watches her play the game and shyly smile at the people that sneer at her, he can't help but wonder if this is what Akiko felt when she saw him act cheerful around the spiteful villagers. When she saw him grin and beam at them as if their hurtful words and glares were blessings from the gods. He wonders if she once felt this same puzzled awe, the same confusion that to Naruto would seem like how one would feel if they see someone hold out a hand to a starving, rabid animal. He can't help but feel perplexed by his sister's actions, can't help but wonder what could possibly be going on in that crazy head of hers for her to do what she does now, which in his opinion is an entirely useless and ultimately pointless endeavor. He knows it isn't a game, no matter what she calls it. He also knows that it's stupid. You don't hold your hand out to rabid animals. It just isn't done. Doing that would be begging to get bitten.

Despite the fact that he had once been like that (dumb, stupid, and probably really _really_ insane) back then, he still doesn't get it.

Or maybe it's _because_ he's done it all before that he doesn't get it, because he's moved on from that stupidity now, and he finally understands why Akiko has always been a porcupine feelings-wise. He learned from his mistakes and paid for them — not as much as Akiko though, he should never forget that Akiko paid more for his mistakes than he himself ever would — and nothing confuses him more than the fact that his sister seems intent on making those same mistakes of his. He sees her act the way he probably acted before — all smiles and cheery and sunny crap — and it almost makes him laugh how dumb it all is. Had he really been that stupid?

Looking back on it now, he must have been some special kind of idiot. Even dogs know to avoid the people that kick them. Even dogs know to bite if they're being attacked.

That doesn't say much about his sister's intelligence though, which is all sorts of weird, because she's one of the smartest people Naruto knows. She taught him everything he knows — from the meanings of big words like "meritocracy" and "propaganda", to how he should cook vegetables so they don't muck up the taste of food (as much as he hates eating _plants_ , Akiko has long since drilled into his brain that he needs a well-balanced diet if he wants to become a powerful shinobi), to his maths and calligraphy and kunai-throwing. Akiko is really smart, a _genius_ , even, and it confuses the hell out of Naruto how she could be so smart with a lot of things and be so dumb with others. It confuses him that she doesn't understand that these villagers are trash, scum, riff-raff, filth, garbage — all those dirty words that they dared to call her — even after what happened _that_ night.

 _Especially_ after what happened that night.

Akiko tells him not to think like that, tells him that 'a minority doesn't represent a population', that seven shinobi don't represent the entire village, and it makes him want to bash some sense into her skull because it's not just the seven he's talking about, not really, and she _knows_ that. She knows that it's the _majority_ of the village that hates them, and it's the minority (a very small minority) that's nice to them. But he doesn't tell her that, because there's something fragile about her whenever she tells him that Konoha isn't the hell he's making it out to be (which it definitely _is_ , he'd retort in the confines of his mind). She always looks so very small when she tells him that he should love Konoha (But why should he? Or why should _she_ , for that matter?), when she tells him that Konoha would love them back one day. She looks so breakable, like a slight gust of wind would rip her to pieces, and he doesn't want her to break, so he keeps his thoughts to himself — he does that a lot now that Akiko morphed into an irritating ball of smiles and positivity — and he just allows his sweet sister to delude herself.

Well, most of the time.

Sometimes it gets to him though, the way she'd sometimes wax poetic about how beautiful Konoha is and how she'd protect it and how he should protect it with her, and he'd blurt out something stupid about _that_ night before he could stop himself — not that he really wants to. Even though he's mostly willing to ignore Akiko's sudden love for Konoha, sometimes he needs to remind her of how things really are. Of how reality really looks like. Akiko needs to understand that _no_ , hate does _not_ mean love, and "demon child" is _not_ a term of endearment.

But whenever he tells her that, she dares to _lecture_ him — as if he's being dumb, which he isn't! — and tells him that not everyone in the village is evil, and he doesn't get how she could possibly _believe_ that after all that's happened. It makes him feel really stupid at first, because he just can't understand her or see what she sees, and she's supposed to be really smart, so is it just Naruto who doesn't see it? Is it just him who can't see anything worth loving in this village? Is he blind as well as stupid?

But then he thinks, why can't Akiko see what _he_ sees? Why can't she understand what he knows, what she _used to_ understand before? Did she forget that she hated Konoha? Did she un-know her hatred? Is it possible that all her genius made her forgetful like an old lady?

He would have thought that she'd be the first to work for revenge, because before... before _it_ happened to her, she was always angry and sullen and more than a little bitter towards Konoha — which he totally understands now, by the way — but she surprised him by being forgiving and all that. It makes him angry, sometimes (okay, _all the time_ , but he can't stay mad at Akiko for more than a few minutes anyway), seeing her act benevolent and whatever. It's weird that she can't seem to get why he's so angry at shinobi, and why he doesn't smile anymore, and why he's reluctant to visit Hokage-jiji nowadays.

Naruto sighs. Aki-chan can be really dumb sometimes.

* * *

Uzumaki Akiko is quite certain that nobody wishes for a time machine more than she does. If she ever comes across one she'd hug it to her chest and never let it go. She'd use it to go back to the past — to the moment she and Naruto were born (Why was she even born? It's fucking pointless, she has no purpose here.)— and she'd do the world a huge favor and

Just.

Stop.

Breathing.

It would fix _everything_. Naruto would be growing up without her interference, like he should be, and she'd be deader than the dinosaurs, which she should be. Unless she ends up born again in some other weird ( _Fictional_ , this shit's supposed to be _fictional_ ) world, in which case it would be kind of pointless, but at least she wouldn't be possibly dooming an entire world of people to a parody of The Matrix, and anything's got to be better than this, right? Than the maddening fear of ruining countless of lives.

(She knows that she's not so terrified of the future as she is of the past, but she tries not to think about that. She tries to not even _think_ about thinking about it, actually.)

If she can't kill herself by holding her breath (it's a stupid plan, brats do it all the time and they don't die — unfortunately), then she'd find some rat poison as soon as she can walk. Or she'd go choke on something shiny. Or make it so that her kunai-throat-dead moment in the playground happens before Naruto finds her, hopefully it wouldn't be too late by then. There are many ways to go.

(She doesn't really want to die, doesn't want to go back to that big black nothingnothing _nothing—_ )

Better yet, if that time machine is special enough to go past death or whatever — which it is, because damn it all, it's her imaginary time machine and it could do whatever the fuck she wants it to — she'd go back to her first life and avoid the hell out of the... the whatever it is that killed her.

(She can't remember. Why can't she _remember_?)

But she doesn't have a time machine. She can't go back to the past. Time machines don't even exist, and she doesn't know why she's daydreaming about something that would never happen—

(Like Naruto loving Konoha. Like Naruto seeing the good in people. Both things that would never happen, and it's all her faul—)

Akiko shakes her head and tries to pay attention in class. She's not very successful, because Mizuki-sensei is just basically reciting the book word-for-word and she's finished that chapter like, _ten million years ago_ , but she at least doesn't look like she's daydreaming anymore, even if she totally still is.

Beside her, Naruto is furiously scribbling notes in his notebook, and she's equal parts impressed and apprehensive at the sight. She knows Naruto isn't an idiot — at least not anymore — and she knows that he can do well in class if he tries, but she also knows how badly the teachers are biased against both of them, and she's afraid of how he would deal with the disappointment of not getting the grades he deserves. Would he cry, like she did the first time she realized that the teachers would never be fair to her? Would he be furious, like she was, a few weeks after she'd cried about it? Or would he just shrug it off like yesterday's dust, let it roll off him as if it doesn't affect him in the first place (even if it does, it _really_ does), like what she's doing now?

Ultimately, Akiko decides that it doesn't matter. Naruto does what he does and thinks what he thinks and there's nothing she can do to convince him otherwise.

She studiously ignores the little voice in her head that tells her that all she has to do is traumatize him enough, and he'd be running the opposite direction in record time.

Nobody eats lunch with the Uzumaki twins. It's an unspoken rule between children — that is, unspoken unless they are yelling at the "demon children" to just "go die." Akiko doesn't mind. She doesn't know the first thing about what eight-year-olds are interested in, and she's relatively certain that unlike Naruto, normal eight-year-olds aren't hell-bent on avenging their family—

She spares a glance at the spot a dark-haired boy is sat, then frowns.

— okay, Uchiha Sasuke does _not_ count.

She wishes there is at least one person she can relate to, on an intellectual level if not emotional, and for a moment her eyes slide over to Nara Shikamaru, Konoha Academy's resident coma patient, with the absurd amount of time he spends asleep. Akiko knows that the Nara kid is a genius, and for a split-second she's filled with the urge to approach him and talk about how everything — the children, the teachers, the civilians, the whole goddamned _system_ — is so stupid, but she reins herself. She's not supposed to hate anything. She's not allowed to, for shit's sake, not when Naruto's doing enough hating for both of them.

She hates everything though, hates it enough that she wants to burn it to the ground and spit on it, but she can't, because she's waiting for...well, she doesn't know what she's waiting for, really, but she just knows that things would work out eventually. Destiny or Fate or whatever the hell it is that rules the system, would fix things and turn everything back to the way it should be.

So she grins and smiles and tolerates the shit out of these Leaf fuckers like she's Buddha, because at the moment Naruto's incapable of smiling at the people without his lips twisting into a hurt-animal kind of grimace. And isn't that just pathetic? He's supposed to have this legendary "mask of happiness," and where is it now? Hidden very, very, _very_ deep within the abyss of his psyche, that's where.

Naruto's having a weak moment right now, so Akiko has to be strong enough for both of them, has to smile bright enough, laugh loud enough, for both of them. Naruto is being Akiko right now, and that's okay, since Akiko never really understood how he could stand being Naruto for so long in the first place. (Was he _insane_? Smiling at these Leaf bastards and hoping for love from these heartless scumbags, wanting to become Hokage so that people would _accept_ him, that's got to be the dumbest shit she's ever heard of!) For now, Akiko would let Naruto have his moment, and while he's getting his bearings, she'd be Naruto for him. For now, she'd laugh and smile and be the overly cheerful Uzumaki brat that he should be. Soon enough, he'd bounce right back from his funk. It's in his nature. He trips, falls on his face, and gets back on his feet as if he hadn't tripped in the first place. He's just having a... thing, right now. It's perfectly acceptable, and very human.

She only hopes he doesn't remain Akiko forever, because she can't be Naruto forever. She can't smile like this, laugh like this, forever.

Her cheeks are already starting to hurt.

* * *

 **A/N: It took me a long time to figure out how I was going to write this chapter, and an even longer time to actually finish writing it. Editing is a bitch, and I don't have a beta, so there you go. Gratuitous typos in this chapter, maybe. I'll have to check again after uploading it (hey, I've been reading and rereading it for _hours_ , okay?!)**

 **On another note, I've been asked why I had to include actual rape, like, can't it be attempted (but failed) rape? My answer is a resounding _no_. As you've probably noticed if you've read or watched the series, Uzumaki Naruto's character is so cheerful it's bordering on insane, and he's got godly repression superpowers. Like, he's still all happy and shit even after the shitty childhood and near-death experiences and all! So no, I don't think I could just write an attempted but failed rape of his sister (we already know that all the shit that happens to Naruto himself gets repressed and pushed way way down the Marianas Trench of his brain, so the traumatizing experience shouldn't happen to him, but to someone he values more than himself, which in this fic is Akiko). It has to be actual rape. Sorry if this offends some sensibilities, but that's the way I want to write it, and I did put a warning at the very beginning of the story.**

 **Anyway, tell me what you think! Reviews are love and all that.**


	3. Fixing Views

.

 **THREE**

 **Fixing Views**

* * *

Konoha, Uzumaki Akiko would admit, is just about as beautiful as it is ugly. It puzzles her that she thinks this way, when most of its people do nothing but revile and vilify her and her brother, but she thinks it anyway.

Konoha is ugly.

Konoha is beautiful.

She supposes the scenery — from a substantial distance, that is — makes up for the atrocious hospitality of the general populace. Kind of like how those beaches people see on TV look really nice until they get there themselves and it's all algae wrapping around their toes and crabs pinching their legs and they realize that the weird lump on the sand they just picked up is actually dog shit and not a dead sea cucumber.

Ah but man, the village looks really pretty from above. Anybody who argues that it isn't is either blind or retarded or both. Akiko might hate the place, but she'd be the first to say that the view is nice.

Well, the view _not_ including the hideous mugs on the Hokage Mount Rushmore, because those carved faces are goddamned fugly and makes her wonderwhy the hell Naruto would want his face butchered like _that_. Shodai looks like a girl. Nidaime a porcupine. Jiji's face looks distorted as fuck, and Yondaime's — her father's, she mentally reminds herself, even if thinking it still makes her want to explode all over the place and kill something — has a weird nose, and she's about 99% sure that it doesn't look like that on the pictures in her history book.

When she sits on top of the Nidaime Hokage's head — she doesn't mind the Hokage Mountain as much when she's not _staring_ at it — she sees the red-orange glow of the sunset shine over all of Konoha and can't help but think that the place is so fucking beautiful, it would bring tears to her eyes if it weren't so fucking ugly as well. On her perch she could see the vague outline of the orphanage, the imposing silhouette of the village walls, houses beginning to light up, and buildings and streets bustling with the activity that comes with sunset: genin team meals, desk nin heading off to ramen stands and ice cream shops to get some snacks before going back to work, marketplaces restocking as the merchant caravans finally arrive from their daylight nin-escorted travel. Akiko sees all this and thinks, well damn, look at those people, peopling all over the place.

Akiko thinks about a lot of things.

It's actually funny what she thinks about, because she thinks the sight of Konoha during sunset (and from very far away) might just be worth dying for. She also thinks that she hasn't started with her homework yet, and wonders if she can just finish doing it right here, up on this mountain with the pretty view, away from villagers and their incurable dickery. She thinks about Jiji and wonders if he would pass by here, and if she should wait for him on the off chance that he would. She thinks about the ANBU she's sure is guarding her right now — Hound, she discovers upon taking a whiff of his familiar wet dog smell — and how he's probably shadowing her because Naruto's too slippery to actually keep track of, and he probably resembles both Namikaze Minato and Uzumaki Kushina far too much for Hound's comfort. ...Which, she realizes, is very PTSD of him, but whatever. She thinks about trying her hand at sleeping out up on this mountain, just to get the hang of sleeping outdoors. Shinobi actually do that during missions, right? Camping and whatnot. Well, she actually doesn't give a shit what ninjas did, because they also kill defenseless people in their sleep and annihilate entire towns and she's so not a fan of _that_ , but camping sounds good right about now.

She thinks Hound would carry her back to the apartment the moment she falls asleep, however, and that's... well, that would defeat the whole purpose, because then she'd be _home_ , and she'd have to _see_ _Naruto_ , and...

... and she stops thinking then, her mind blanking out, because there are a shitload of things her brain refuses to process. This is definitely one of them.

It's funny what Akiko thinks about, and what she _doesn't_.

What she doesn't think about is the actual reason she doesn't want to go home. She also doesn't think about what Naruto did in school earlier today. She doesn't think about the way he beat up Uchiha Sasuke in a taijutsu spar, and the way his blue eyes were bright with... something she doesn't want to ever remember. She also doesn't think about how Naruto didn't let up with his punches even as the teacher called off the match. She _especially_ doesn't think about the strangely familiar look on Naruto's face when the bruised and bleeding Uchiha fell unconscious. That wild and ugly look of anger, and the smug satisfaction in his blue eyes as he stared down at—

 _... at her, their glazed eyes furious and yet at the same time immeasurably smug, as they watch her get fucked from both—_

The expression on Naruto's face made him look so old and ugly then, so Akiko did him a favor by looking away so she wouldn't have to see him like that. But by then it was too late, she already _saw_ , and in her mind's eye she can't look away as Naruto's face — sweet, innocent Naruto — morphs into the faces of her tormentors. The faces of her nightmares.

So she forgets it, pushes the memory to the very back of her mind, and starts thinking about all the shit that doesn't really matter. She even thinks about buying a plant, maybe making a terrarium—

"Aki-chan?"

Akiko starts at the sound of Naruto's voice. Well. So much for avoiding the kid. How the fuck did he even find her? She's never been up here before, so he couldn't have guessed.

"Hey," she murmurs with a weak wave at the direction she heard his voice from, her eyes fixed on Konoha because it's fucking pretty, and she likes looking at pretty things. "You here for the view too?"

"No, I..." he hesitates, a conflicted look in his eyes as he briefly glances at the tree Akiko figured Hound was hiding at. The same tree where Cat was now settling in, after arriving with Naruto.

His eyes land back on her, all blue and serious, she's sure. Not that Akiko sees his face, of course. She prefers not to look at scary-ass shit. Which right now happens to be his face. Or something.

He sighs. "I was looking for you."

"And you found me," is her inane reply. Because what was she supposed to say? Congratulations?

"It's getting late."

She nods. "I'm aware. I do see the sunset, Naru."

"You disappeared as soon as class was out, Aki-chan."

"I didn't want to..." _see your face._ "...miss the view. It's nice from up here. I mean," she gestures. "Look at _that_."

He does, for about three seconds, his expression unchanging. Then he stares at her with an inscrutable look. She _could_ tell what he's thinking though, even when he has that creepy blank expression schtick that she just _knows_ he's got going on, even without looking at him. She knows he thinks she's being dumb again. And frankly, she doesn't disagree. Not quite.

She beams softly at the view. "Beautiful, isn't it? Totally worth dying for." She says gently while maintaining a beatific smile would've had her canonized had she been in her life _before_ , because they're being watched right now and roles have to be played, and Naruto's being a huge lumbering baka just standing there and looking about as expressive as a rock.

 _Smile, damn it._

He sports a frown then, as if sensing her thoughts, and fidgets. He totally sucks ass at the innocence game. She made it into a game — because he's supposed to get things if they were more hands-on, right? — but he still sucks anyway. Like, so much so that she wonders why he even agreed to do this shit if he hates it so much. Because he could totally just not do it. She's good enough at it for the both of them. Sort of. The kids in class give her weird looks sometimes though, probably wondering if she got a personality transplant or something.

"Yeah," he eventually mutters, with as much enthusiasm as a lamb about to be slaughtered. "Totally, dattebayo."

She almost grimaces at his _atrocious_ acting skills — because seriously, what the fuck was that? — but she sighs instead. She looks at him then, _finally_ , but she keeps seeing that smug sneer on his face (she knows it's not real, she knows he's just frowning and being serious-like, but still), and she _doesn't care_ anymore if she's hallucinating because it still scares her to kingdom come and that's all that matters. Her eyes surreptitiously slide off of him and dart back to the horizon. "Are you okay, Naruto?"

He bristles. "What do you mean, am _I_ —"

"You looked upset after your spar with Uchiha-san, and Umino-sensei didn't acknowledge your win. So, _are you okay_? "

He glances again at The ANBU Hiding Tree — and wow, thanks so much for being as subtle as a rampaging bijuu, Naruto — and he scowls, before sitting down next to her. "I'm fine, imouto. Just... I'm used to it, ya know? I don't get upset by that anymore."

"By Umino-sensei all but ignoring us, yes." She replies. "But apparently Uchiha-san does upset you. Or he did. Did he do anything?"

"That bastard is such a..." He suddenly purses his lips. "I don't wanna talk about it." _Not here, at least,_ goes unsaid.

"... Okay."

"... Are _you_ okay?"

"Yes," she replies. "I'm just a bit tired. Let's go home."

* * *

"Uzumaki-san."

Akiko wakes with a start, eyelids snapping open as she looks for whoever spoke. She didn't expect to fall asleep under a tree during lunch break, but Naruto was bugging her something fierce all through last night, what with his constant fussing and growling and whatnot.

 _"Why aren't you looking at me, Aki-chan?"_

 _"... I can't."_

 _"Why not?"_

 _"I don't know."_

Naruto scowled at her and proceeded to ignore her (Which is super fucking weird, come to think of it. He _never_ ignored her.) and she ignored him back. They ended up spending the night so far away from each other on their shared bed that they both would've fallen off the edges had they actually _slept_. As it was, they both remained awake, haunted by the vestiges of their first ever fight.

By morning, Akiko was gone before Naruto even opened his eyes, feeling a strange irrational sort of fear that Naruto would hurt her, because she remembers that he was _so_ _angry_ before, and —

 _"Demon whore!"_

 _"Abomination!"_

She wasn't supposed to be afraid of Naruto, she thought that morning, shouldn't be so terrified by the look of absolute fury in his eyes when he gazed at the village through their window, but she's scared anyway. It scared her how his face contorted into this really angry expression that's very familiar to her in the worst sort of way, it scared her that his fists were clenched, like he wanted to punch someone. Like maybe he wanted to punch _her_. It was all familiar, very familiar. So she left the apartment before he could open his eyes (he hadn't slept, she could tell), before his face could twist again into the expression of their tormentors.

Of _her_ tormentors. They never really did anything to _him_.

"Uzumaki-san. You're on our spot."

Akiko snaps out of her reverie with a jolt, eyes landing on the somewhat familiar silhouettes of Nara Shikamaru and Akimichi Chouji. She frowns, the harsh glare of the noon sun hurting her eyes. She pulls herself up to a sitting position and nods at the intruders. Or is she the intruder here? Damn it all, how was she supposed to know that this random, nondescript tree is _the_ Shikamaru Napping Tree? It didn't have his fucking name on it!

Realizing that she has no intention of leaving her (his, he thinks) spot, Nara Shikamaru grumbles out a _troublesome_ before landing beside her in an unceremonious thud, Chouji silently following next to him.

His eye peels open and curiously glances at the stranger beside him. _Uzumaki Akiko,_ his mind supplies. One half of the village pariah twins. Talented enough in nearly everything — taijutsu, theory, weapon-throwing — to be Rookie of the Year in four years come graduation. Better than even Uchiha Sasuke — which Shikamaru knows for a fact annoys the last Uchiha to the high heavens — but sabotaged academically by the teachers and thus left ranking in the middle of the class. Smart, skilled, and silent unless spoken to. Systematically bullied upperclassman Tohya Daisuke three months ago — and never got caught — after Tohya physically abused her brother. Currently acting grossly out of character, and revealing a cheerful affect similar to her brother's. Evidently passive-aggressive, quite possibly manic-depressive.

Frustrated genius.

 _Troublesome,_ he decides.

"Ah," she starts with a languid stretch. "Akimichi-san. Nara-san. Good day."

The boys absently nod in acknowledgement.

"Where's your brother?" Chouji softly asks. "I haven't seen Naruto-san since break started."

Uzumaki Akiko shrugs. "I suppose he's wherever, doing whatever, to prank whomever. You know how he is, Akimichi-san, Nara-san."

"But he hasn't pranked anyone in more than a month," Shikamaru blurts out.

"True," Uzumaki concedes with a slight nod. "But you never know, he might be in a pranking mood right now. He's unpredictable like that."

Somehow Shikamaru doubts that that's the case. "... Did he fix whatever made him stop pranking people?"

She glances at him at the corner of her eye. "Maybe, maybe not. Contrary to popular opinion," she sighs, "I am not aware of everything that goes on in my brother's mind, Nara-san."

And Shikamaru remains silent, because what does one say to that?

They stay that way for a while, enjoying the silence, none of them uttering a single word, until Shikamaru feels a strange tingling sensation at the back of his head, and he knows instantly that he's being watched.

"What is it, Uzumaki-san?" He drawls out, because he knows that she's watching him, and now that his curiosity is piqued, he feels the need to... investigate. She never interacted with him before today, barely even spoke to him beyond the customary "good day/good bye, Nara-san." She seemed aloof to everyone who wasn't her twin brother, her attention never lingering on any one person, as if nobody mattered besides Naruto. She was stoic, cold, and nigh emotionless.

Until she suddenly wasn't.

The Uzumaki girl is a walking contradiction. She used to be apathetic towards the teachers and the villagers, and now she's smiling at everyone like doing it would win her a prize. Her brother is coincidentally more withdrawn, and hasn't pranked anyone in a _month,_ which has to be some sort of record.

Granted, the changes are relatively subtle (Obvious obvious _obvious_ , he chants in his head. How could nobody else _see_?), but Nara Shikamaru isn't an idiot. To him, the changes are as clear as day.

Usually, Shikamaru would just ignore whatever the deal is with the Uzumaki twins — they are the epitome of _issues_ and _trouble_ , after all, and whatever is going on with them is Not His Business — but the sudden changes in the twins bother him because...

Because it seems like the twins _switched_ personalities — which is as alarming an idea as it is stupid, he knows — and that switch seems to have happened a month ago.

A month ago, it was October. The change was apparent on the eleventh of October, when Uzumaki Akiko suddenly started smiling at her classmates and teachers, and her brother started glaring at them, which means that whatever caused it must have happened on the tenth.

The tenth of October was the anniversary of the Kyuubi no Kitsune's death. The eighth anniversary, in fact.

Eighth.

...

All of a sudden, it dawns on him.

He remembers that the Uzumaki twins are _eight_ years old.

He remembers Uzumaki Naruto mentioning some months ago that their birthday's on _October tenth_.

The civilians call them _demon children_.

The Nine-tails was a fox _demon,_ according to the academy scrolls about the Shodai and the Yondaime. The Yondaime, who was said to have defeated it. On October tenth. When the Uzumaki twins were born.

Shikamaru wonders how he could have missed it. It's so bleeding _obvious_.

There are a lot of other conclusions that can be drawn from those facts and observations, of course, but—

"How do you deal with it, Nara-san?" The Uzumaki girl's question nearly gives him a heart attack.

"Deal with what?" he absently blurts out. His deductions are consolidating now, and he doesn't like what they're becoming.

 _Fox demon. Defeated by the Yondaime Hokage eight years ago. Eight-year-old twins. Eight-year-old twins with whiskered cheeks. Demon twins._

"You know," Uzumaki mutters, vaguely gesturing with her hand at their classmates playing ninja in the distance. " _That_."

"'That'?"

"The childishness. The shallowness. How do you deal with it all? I'm curious."

Chouji's bag of chips crinkle in the background.

"I..." He trails off, realizing that she doesn't really want to know his answer, because there's a look in her violet eyes. A scared look, as if she knows that the cogs in his brain are spinning and spinning, and she's _terrified_ because she doesn't want him to know... something. He's not sure what. So he decides to ask her, "I wonder, is there only one Kyuubi no Kistune? Or are there two of them?"

Her face falls blank then, and Shikamaru knows that he's on the right track, somewhat. But he feels like he's walking that "right track" backwards, and there's something right behind him that he's missing. Something big.

Chouji interrupts the tense air by offering his snack to Uzumaki with a soft, "Chips?"

* * *

 **A/N: I am aliiiive! And lookie, it's Shikamaru and his brain! (And Chouji, but I kinda forgot to write him lines, oops!)**

 **Anyway, holy shit, Akiko's issues are addressed in this chapter! And a non-Uzumaki character! (Chouji doesn't really count because he only speaks, like, twice) And Shikamaru totally doing his Sherlock thingy, even if he does come up with the weirdest conclusion! And look at me, typing all my sentences with exclamation points! I think I'm high on caffeine! Woo!**

 **Tell me what you think!**


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